KEY POINTS:
The virtues of hard graft are starting to pay off in a big way for Daniel Bell.
He was the star turn at the junior world championships in Mexico where he won three gold medals before this week being named the male swimmer of the meet.
Now, the precocious 18-year-old has his sights set on the Olympic Games in Beijing next month when he will perform the leadoff backstroke leg for the New Zealand medley relay team.
It has been a heady few months for Bell, who initiated a meeting with his West Auckland Aquatics club coaches Donna Bouzaid and Simon Mayne last December after he grew dissatisfied with his progress in the pool.
The results of that chat have been profound.
Bell seriously increased his commitment, upped his weekly training regime from 12 to 18 hours in the water and added regular weight sessions in the gym to improve his strength.
His year 13 studies at Massey High School suffered, but Bell considered that a sacrifice he was willing to make in Olympic year.
He has been rewarded in the pool with vastly improved times, which have seen him speed past the likes of Kurt Bassett, John Zulch and Cameron Stanley to be considered this country's best backstroker.
Since Christmas, Bell has shaved close to six seconds off his best time over 200m, lowered his 100m time from 58.5s to 54.9s and improved his 50m efforts from 27.6s to 25.9s.
In his other specialist stroke, the butterfly, he has set a new national mark of 23.61s over 50m and posted 52.52s to win the 100m title in Mexico.
His performances in Mexico tell him he is on the right track but the step up to Olympic level is huge, and can be equated to moving from the shallow end to the deep end of the pool.
"It is only youth level, but I wasn't expecting to come away with three golds or anything like that," he said yesterday of his experiences in Mexico.
Bell is seen as a potential star of the future, and his best will probably not be seen until the 2012 Olympics in London and the next Games four years later.
So while time is his friend, Bell wants to keep his head down, work hard and let the results take care of themselves.
He is very much his own (young) man, nagging his mother, Sheree Rae, for six months before she agreed to allow him to leave their Havelock North home in Hawkes Bay in January last year so he could shift to Auckland to commit himself to swimming.
He juggled his schoolwork with his pool work until last December when he sat down with Bouzaid and Mayne to re-evaluate his approach.
Bell recalled that he instigated the meeting with his coaches.
"I just wanted to get a lot faster. I didn't think I was swimming as well as I could. I wanted to know what I had to do to get where I wanted to be, which was to qualify for the Olympics.
"I moved up to the high-performance elite squad at the club and increased both my training and my intensity. I've gone from being an average age grouper to one of New Zealand's high-performances swimmers. It's been a pretty big jump."
Bell has been turning heads on the domestic scene for some time and not only because of his ability in the water.
For one so young, he has a natural, outgoing personality and is quick to crack a joke even in the company of older rivals.
As a generalisation, New Zealand swimmers could be considered a contained lot, while Bell is almost brash - but in a nice way.
"I do believe in myself," he said. I know I have what it takes. It's a matter of whether I do the work or not.
"Sometimes I display it and some people can take that the wrong way. Some people take it as being cocky, but it's not really that."
Bell then gives a perfect example of why he can be misunderstood.
"I don't see New Zealand as a very strong swimming nation, so turning up to the nationals is not such a big thing for me. For some people it is.
"I sort of take a lot more of a relaxed approach at the nationals than other people do."
There is a strong hint of attitude there, and one which may serve Bell well as he endeavours to increase his international profile.
He certainly knows where he wants to go and makes no secret about what drives him.
"Every athlete who does an Olympic sport has the major goal of winning an Olympic gold. That is my major goal in life.
- NZPA
